Afghan asylum seeker arrested over murder of German medical student who was daughter of senior EU official

A teenage Afghan asylum seeker has been arrested after he reportedly confessed to murdering the daughter of a senior EU official.

Maria Ladenburger, a 19-year-old medical student, was raped and killed shortly after leaving a student party in Freiburg, southern Germany, on October 16.

According to German media reports, the 17-year-old suspect will stand trial early next year.

Ms Ladenburger was the daughter of Dr Clemens Ladenburger, who since 2008 has been an assistant to the director of the European Commission's legal wing.

The Freiburg University student, who reportedly volunteered at a local refugee shelter in her spare time, was raped before drowning in the River Dreisam.

A team of 40 investigators were put to work combing the area for clues, and eventually came across a black scarf that belonged to Ms Ladenburger on the riverbed.

They also found a seven-inch strand of dark hair that had been dyed blonde, but drew a blank after comparing the DNA on both items to their own records.

Maria Ladenburger

Three weeks later, investigators unearthed CCTV footage from a tram station which showed an asylum seeker who wore what police described as "a very conspicuous hairstyle, an undercut hairstyle," that was dyed blond in parts.

He was tracked down and arrested before being asked to take a DNA test, which according to German newspaper Bild matched him to the crime scene.

A German police spokesman said yesterday that they were trying to establish whether Ms Ladenburger knew her killer.

They are also looking into whether the attack had been planned in advance. Dr Ladenburger and his wife Friederike Ladenburger have since posted a memorial notice in their local newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine, which pays tribute to their daughter.

"For 19 years Maria was a great ray of sunshine in our family and she will remain so," it reads. "We thank God for giving us this gift, and for letting her be our child. We are sure that she is safe with him."

A requiem was held for Ms Ladenburger at the Notre Dame des Graces Church in Brussels last October.

Her alleged killer is understood to have arrived in Germany during an influx of nearly one million asylum seekers in 2015 and had been living with a foster family without incident.

Maria Ladenburger, 19

Germany has been bitterly divided over Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision last year to declare an "open door" refugee policy in response to the war in Syria, which has displaced more than 4.8 million people.

Since them, a number of domestic terror attacks and plots in Germany have been linked to asylum seekers of both Syrian and Afghan origin.

In July, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker attacked passengers on a train in southern Germany with an axe, leaving three people seriously injured.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) went on to claim responsibility for the attack.

Ms Ladenburger's case has drawn some comparisons in the German media to that of Caroline G, a 27-year-old jogger who was raped and murdered in November in Endingen, which is near Freiburg.

However, German police have denied any links to the unsolved murder. "We have no connection to the killing in Endingen," German prosecutor Dieter Inhofer said.